DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.548#0085
82
THE EXODUS PAPYRI.
We now arrive at two longer ones of that puz-
zling description which we continually meet with
in these papyri. It is to meet the difficulty of
giving any rational account of such paragraphs as
these, that I suppose the howling women at fune-
rals to have had very little care for what they were
howling, and the scribes who prepared their matter
for them not much more themselves. There was,
probably, a regular well-known set of stock sub-
jects on hand, one or other of which would be
adopted, and more or less modified, according as
different striking events in the life of the deceased
were supposed to admit of illustration.
The truth of this theory seems indeed to be almost
implied in the A*ery words of the first paragraph
(78.5). For the supposed letter runs thus :—
The scribe Amen-m-Apt
To the scribe Pinebsa.
When you get this communication
How must you give attention to become a scribe
Agreeable to a thinking scribe.
He then goes on to give, merely it would seem
as a specimen of fine style, an account which here
begins, "I wish to tell you the adventures of a
lieutenant." But in another papyrus this appears
again as the middle part of a much longer con-
nected story. It is not there given in the form of
a letter. It has a context and connexion which
here it is deprived of. The passage, in fact, in
this supposed letter, actually ends in the middle
THE EXODUS PAPYRI.
We now arrive at two longer ones of that puz-
zling description which we continually meet with
in these papyri. It is to meet the difficulty of
giving any rational account of such paragraphs as
these, that I suppose the howling women at fune-
rals to have had very little care for what they were
howling, and the scribes who prepared their matter
for them not much more themselves. There was,
probably, a regular well-known set of stock sub-
jects on hand, one or other of which would be
adopted, and more or less modified, according as
different striking events in the life of the deceased
were supposed to admit of illustration.
The truth of this theory seems indeed to be almost
implied in the A*ery words of the first paragraph
(78.5). For the supposed letter runs thus :—
The scribe Amen-m-Apt
To the scribe Pinebsa.
When you get this communication
How must you give attention to become a scribe
Agreeable to a thinking scribe.
He then goes on to give, merely it would seem
as a specimen of fine style, an account which here
begins, "I wish to tell you the adventures of a
lieutenant." But in another papyrus this appears
again as the middle part of a much longer con-
nected story. It is not there given in the form of
a letter. It has a context and connexion which
here it is deprived of. The passage, in fact, in
this supposed letter, actually ends in the middle